[pookha]

What your Chinese friend isn't saying is that all those Substack writers in the US would be disappeared into Chinese gulag's. The US has a strong freedom of speech clause baked into its core governance system...When I was fifteen I'd be subscribed to five different punk zines and would be creating mix-tapes from 10 different sources (and much of it wildly offensive and political).

[imcritic]

[flagged]

[agsqwe]

Everything is relative. I'm an immigrant from a post-USSR country and the US is still orders of magnitude more democratic and free

[Hikikomori]

Does it matter if you can speak if the system is designed do that you can't be heard?

[bluGill]

You can be and are heard. It may only be a tiny minority, but odds are good someone hears you. That is better than disappearing if you speak.

[pjc50]

A more serious problem: do people want to listen? Do they want difficult truths or comforting lies?

[thisisit]

Loudest voice in the room wins. Crying baby gets the milk. Always.

You can pick any opinion you got from media. Whether it is the whole discussion around autism or the push for DEI. Everything comes down to someone speaking or maybe even shouting.

The unfortunate fact is that people try to see everything through a conspiracy lens and hence miss out voices are still heard - loud and clear.

[bongodongobob]

And yet people are getting fired over making comments about Charlie Kirk on social media.

[philwelch]

There’s something hypocritical about a person who thinks it’s an injustice for them to be fired for expressing their opinions, when that opinion is that they are glad Charlie Kirk was murdered for expressing his opinions.

Karl Popper said,

“But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols."

[jonnybgood]

By the government?

[adamtaylor_13]

Freedom of speech, not freedom from consequences. People aren't "making comments," they're celebrating the murder of a man whose opinions they disagreed with.

Many Americans are waking up to realize that a large number of people they considered friends and colleagues would revel in their death if they let their political opinions be heard.

I would 100% fire someone for celebrating murder. Sorry, call me old-fashioned, but I believe in hiring people of integrity, and I will fire you if I find out you don't have any.

[manoDev]

[flagged]

[Manuel_D]

Shouting down other people deprives them of their freedom of speech, and is rightfully prevented. Padilla was detained because he was attempting to do that: disrupt someone else from exercising speech. He could have made the exact same speech in his own space without consequences.

If you disapprove of how Padilla was treated, that's fine, just be honest about why he was detained: not for the content of his speech, but his attempt to prevent another from speaking.